Tenannts removed and now to clean up

This forum is for discussing all topics related to the challenges (and joys!) of keeping your house clean while living with dogs. Here you can share tips, recommendations for products and techniques, and more!

To cut a long story short, a friend of mum's offered me some money to help clean out & clean up a house belonging to her and her daughter. The house had been rented out under a private lease & the police had to be involved to get the person out. The person had been letting her cats toilet in the shower stall & didn't clean up after them for months. (It was lined with plastic & kitty litter)The back porch has had her dogs (4 of them) Sleeping on it on a mix of cardboard,old blankets, and what I think is a cot matress.

How do you get the smell of cat pee out of a shower? Short of ripping the tiles out? And De-doggy stink a tiled porch?

P.S a friend of a friend has taken the critters. All are safe, well fed and well loved.

Dunlop,
You will need some type of enzymatic cleaner. That is the only way to get the smell out of the tub.What type of tile is the floor? ceramic or vinyl? If it's ceramic the same enzymatic cleaner that you use for the tub should work on the tile. If it's vinyl you might want to clean it with the enzymatic cleaner seal it with a primer and put down sheet vinyl/linoleum flooring. You may have to use an enzyme based cleaner more than once to get rid of all of the smell.
I would recommend one but availability differs by location. Look in the pet isle of your market or at your petstore for pet odor eliminator and read lables so that you get one with odor eliminating enzymes. The enzymes are the only thing that will get rid of the odor permanently. Good Luck!! it sounds like alot to take on.

People like this are the reason people like me have a hard time finding a place to live. Best of luck to you. You might want to give the shower a couple of days between cleaning. Cat pee is bad for returning smell.

Sabi,
The next time you are looking for a place to rent ask the landlord about a special pet agreement. We rented our current house before buying it and we had one,ours was made up by the landlords lawyer but some of the terms were that we could not have a 24/7 outdoor dog. Not a problem for us our pets are part of the family and stay inside with us. Offspring of any Oops litter had to be gone by age 9weeks,we were finamcially responsible for any damage done by the dog(S) and we had to carry a renters policy on our insurance to cover dog bites or damages. Perhaps pitching the willingness to sign something similar to a potential new landlord would help you in getting into a place otherwise reluctant to allow pets. Sorry this is off topic,just thought it might help Sabi and the Dogster Fleas have been affecting ability to p-mail.

You can try Petastic enzymatic cleaner, but I have to say I wish you much luck, cat urine is very, very tough odor to eliminate and especially if it was being used as a litter box by multiple cats for that length of time. I'm hoping these people paid a security deposit because the owner may really end up needing it. You mentioned tile -- cat urine can be easily absorbed into the grout and the smell is not pretty.

What I would try first is the enzymatic cleaner. Then follow it up with other industrial-level cleaners like CLR if there has been any staining. You may also want to mix up a bottle of diluted bleach water in a spray bottle and saturate the entire shower and let it sit overnight before rinsing and cleaning. If the odor is still present, before replacing tiles I would re-grout and re-caulk. Get a caulk softening agent, and get a grout line scraper to remove the existing caulk and to scrape down the grout lines by about 1/2 inch at least. Then you can re-grout (non-sanded grout for tubs and showers) and re-caulk...since it's not really the tiles that are absorbing the stench, it's mostly the caulk and grout absorbing it. Just some thoughts from another landlord, lol....

Oops sorry, missed the second part. Is the porch a covered porch or an exterior porch? If it's exterior, good enzymatic cleaner, thorough scrubbing and time should be enough. If it's an enclosed porch, you may need to resort to harsher cleaners...and hopefully the porch has windows that can open up, letting it air out over a period of a few weeks will be a big help too.

oy, this probably isn't what you want to hear, but my co-worker was telling me about her struggles cleaning up a rental home owned by her mother- the past tenant also had to be removed by police, left the house a TOTAL wreck, and even worse, took her two kids and dog with her and went on the lam, so the law couldn't take them away. In her case, there was excrement all through the house, rotten garbage piled up on the porch and filling the kitchen, and every toilet/drain in the house was plugged up with yuck. House full of broken, pee-soaked furniture and clothing. Dog totally wrecked all the doors with clawing/chewing, window screens were trashed, and all the outdoor landscaping was trashed too. It's costing them tens of thousands to fix/replace everything.

The tiles in the shower have been removed, the grout being porous meant the cat pee has gone through to the joists. The Land Lady is highly upset over it as she's having to find a builder to asses the damage to the joists. And may I say that it REEKS!?!

The porch is an open one with hard wood cladding on two sides and a rail on the other. Beautiful red wood timber floor. I'm going with her to the hardware store next week to get more dust masks and a few other things that we've figured out are going to be necessary. Like a skip bin. And a shovel for the refuse out in the garage. She'd been trowing her rubbish, in bags, into the garage and then just closing the door.

The Tenant has been assessed as having mental health issues and has been admitted to a hospital by the state.

Dunlop,
So sorry that you and your Mom's friend are dealing with such a mess. We had a plumbing problem we were unaware of until the livingroom ceiling cracked and fell (sm.part) We had to clean out the whole area and let it dry for at least a month before the repairs could be completed. The pipe in our case was fixed immediately. The joists and ceiling waited until everything was completely dry before it could be repaired. It may be months before your Mom's friend can rent that apartment again. We have a woman like the tennant you describe in our area,she is now on her third house,the previous two had to be torn down because they were unfit for habitation by humans.
Landlords are spared because the woman buys the houses.She is a hoarder,baglady,and also hoards animals.Our humane society recently removed 47 cats from her home. Due to her mental health issues she has done no jail time,and the taxpayers of the city have paid for demolition of both of her houses so far and will probably be paying for a third soon.Your mom's friend might want to get word out to other landlords she knows not to rent to this person. Good Luck with the clean-up and I hope it isn't too expensive.We'll keep our fingers and paws crossed for you.

Thankfully in Australia there is a register that if you try to rent via a real estate agent it keeps a permanent record of what you do if you can't make the rent, damage the property, complaints from neighbors ect. She's been put in a ward somewhere at a mental hospital, her family has said to get rid of all the furniture ect in the house. We've offered for them to pick any heirlooms ect out.

we're looking at a few months minimum before the house is back up to standard. Her daughter wants to move into it with her partner and use the attached acreage for their horse. Looking forwards to the day that that can happen, ATM we're doing a little bit at a time as the smell gets to you. The land lady is thankfull that they pulled a few other older sheds down before this lady moved in otherwise she probably would have filled them as well!

We got the laundry fixed today, no damage done thankfully, just full of stuff.